Supreme Court gives Centre 60 day deadline to set up courts in every district for child abuse cases

At present, there are no courts set up exclusively for dealing with POCSO (protection of children from sexual offences) cases.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi suggested that the government should make available the money needed for setting up these courts in districts which have more than 100 such cases pending.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered the central government to set up in 60 days exclusive courts in every district of the country to deal with cases related to child abuse and sexual assault.

At present, there are no courts set up exclusively for dealing with POCSO (protection of children from sexual offences) cases. Some of the existing courts handle them, making trial impossible within the mandated one-year period under POCSO Act.

A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi suggested that the government should make available the money needed for setting up these courts in districts which have more than 100 such cases pending. These courts will be funded by the Centre and attend solely to POCSO cases.

The central government will also have to ensure that these courts get the staff and other manpower they require. These include trained child support staff, special public prosecutors and witness court rooms which shield the victim from the accused at all times.

The top court had initially suggested 30 days for implementing its order but doubled it after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta raised objections. The top court tore into the government’s record on creating court infrastructure and manpower to take on additional workload created by new laws, suggesting at one point that though it seemed to be making “every civil offence a criminal offence” there were no matching monetary grants to implement the law.

“It is not difficult to make a law, it is difficult to implement a law successfully,” the CJI said, adding, “Even a civil action Parliament makes a criminal offence, but where are the judges? The country has more cases than the judges can handle.”

The order on exclusive POCSO courts came after registrar SS Rathi and amicus senior advocate V Giri pointed out that existing courts are merely designated as POCSO courts, which places additional burden on already overworked judges. As a result, such cases do not conclude within the mandated one-year period.

Rathi said that a single judge sometimes has to handle 224 such cases an average, though he can handle at the most 60. He said that even if the number of cases already filed under the law were to be to frozen and the number of judges increased three times, it would take six years to wipe off the existing pendency.